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The Right to Know Act is Now Officially "Proposition 37"

A couple months ago I posted about the Money Bomb Against Monsanto which was a campaign that started as a result of the Right to Know Initiative. The goal of this initiative was to collect 850,000 valid signatures statewide for the labeling of GMO’s in order to get the required 550,000. On May 2, 2012 a historic day took place in California as 971,126 signatures were delivered to the 58 county registrars throughout the state.

The Money Bomb against Monsanto was then formed with intentions to raise $1 million dollars (by people donating) within a matter of a couple weeks to help fight against the anti-GMO labeling propaganda by the bio-tech bullies. With the goal of $1 million dollars being achieved a coalition of benefactors (including Mercola.com, Lundberg Farms, Eden Foods, Organic Consumers Association, Food Democracy Now and many others) then MATCHED the 1 million bringing the total to $2 million dollars to help fight Monsanto and the other bio-tech companies. While $2 million dollars seems like a lot of money, it is no where near the amount the bio-tech bullies will be putting in to prevent people from voting YES on PROP 37- an estimated of $60-100 million dollars.

June 11, 2012 the Secretary of State announced the California Right To Know Genetically Engineered Food Act qualified to be on the November 6 ballot. What an amazing victory against all odds! The fight is not over yet and that is why I am posting this. From now until November 6 we all need to do our part in educating people on GMO’s and why we should have them labeled. If (and probably will) California wins in the November ballot it will be the first, biggest step in knocking down Monsanto and finally getting our fundamental right to know what’s in our food. Even if people choose to still purchase food that has a GM ingredient in it at least we had the choice to choose. No hiding, mislabeling, misguiding information- just cold hard facts. YES on 37 means the companies would have until January of 2014 to relabel their foods. The Anti-Labeling Campaign will and is trying to confuse Californians that labeling would drive the cost of foods up. This is completely false as companies change their labels all the time.

A little Info on what GMO’s are & how YOU can help- This was taken from Mamavation’s blog-

So what is a genetically engineered food? According to CA Right to Know (Prop. 37 in California), “a genetically engineered food (also known as genetically modified organism, or GMO) is a plant or meat product that has had its DNA artificially altered by genes from other plants, animals, viruses, or bacteria, to produce foreign compounds in that food. This type of genetic alteration is engineered in a laboratory, and is not found in nature.”

In America, our government says “prove it’s NOT safe”…and in Europe they had a different approach. They said “you need to prove it IS safe.” Those are two very different approaches to food safety. Today GMOs comprise about 70% of the food supply at the grocery store, compared to 5% in Europe. Hmmm…that’s strange. I wonder why that is? In fact, American companies such as Hersheys has reformulated their products in Europe to be GMO free. And yet Hershey’s still has GMOs in their products in the US.

Would you like to join the Evangelist Team? Prop. 37 is enlisting the help of bloggers all over the United States and Canada to help educate everyone about the opportunity we have RIGHT NOW in November. If we can change the labeling laws in California we may be changing labeling all over the United States in the process. If everyone talks about the Prop. 37 online, we WILL reach most Californians.

We all have a right to know what is in our food. And supporting this proposition and reaching California voters is also a vote for the rest of the nation. Throwing some of your influence at this issue can really make a difference because it’s very likely that if this is passed in California, it will get rolled out nationwide by most companies. It would be cost prohibitive not to.

Here are some additional ways you can help.

1. Talk about this issue as much as you can from now till November. Use both hashtags #yeson37 & #labelgmos when doing so.

2. Help us get some celebrities on board. Tweet at who you think could really help us and ask them where they stand on the issue.